The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatically recognizing the presence of image and text areas or graphics areas on a printed master.
Documents produced in a typical office are frequently modified in some form and subsequently stored. In order to undertake these tasks in an economical manner, automatic text processing units, or word processors, have been developed which render possible correction of errors, insertions of new test passages, combinations of texts derived from different sources, and reproduction and electronic storage of the data representing the portions of the text. Such automatic text processing units possess the advantage over conventional typewriters in the high degree of flexibility and time saving in the production of written documents, and accordingly a higher efficiency, associated therewith.
The ease with which information can be fed into such automatic text processing units is a significant factor in determining the outlay for storing and/or transferring information already existing on paper into the automatic text processing unit. A manual transfer of such large amounts of text would be very time consuming and an automatic transfer is therefore preferable.
In undertaking an automatic transfer of such data, the means used to transfer the data must have the capability of separating those areas of the master consisting of text or graphics from those areas containing images. In order to achieve an optimum coding of the data representing these portions of the master, as well as a separate manipulation of such portions, it is a problem in the art to provide a method and apparatus for automatically separating and classifying such components of a master.